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“Are you sure?” Diluc asked for what seemed to be the millionth time.
“I’m not sure of what’s changed since I left,” Albedo replied, “but there’s a fair chance he’s still alive.”
Diluc scowled, muttering something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like ‘why are we doing this again?’
Albedo frowned a bit. “The killing of innocents is unacceptable in Teyvat’s eyes. Do you not consider yourself to be the voice of true justice?”
Diluc’s scowl darkened, but he didn’t respond. Somehow, the prodding question felt like something Kaeya would say.
A few corners later, Albedo unceremoniously shoved Diluc into an alcove behind a statue, before leaning against the pedestal, arms crossed over his chest. It was comical, almost, unsubtle. Albedo was nowhere near large enough to physically hide Diluc with any measure of success. It seemed, though, as the conversation began, that that hadn’t been his intention.
“You,” came a venomous voice.
“Me,” Albedo agreed. “I’m not here to cause trouble.”
“Your being here is trouble,” the unseen man said coldly.
“I’m not here to give you any more reason to want to kill me, that is,” Albedo amended, somehow sounding wholly unconcerned. “But if you’re anything like I remember, His Highness’ wellbeing is more important to you than this ruined country.” Diluc could only see a flash of a black cloak around Albedo’s foot. Albedo paused, feigning a thoughtful silence. “Unless all these years has changed you.”
Privately, Diluc thought that if Albedo ever got tired of alchemy, he ought to join a theatre troupe.
The unseen man muttered something that sounded like a curse in an unknown language. “What do you want?” he relented finally.
Albedo made a pleased noise, as if to say ‘still got it.’ “The keys to His Highness’ room.”
“So you’ve turned traitor too,” the stranger sighed. “Am I the only one left?”
Albedo snorted. “I know where your loyalties lie, Dainsleif. Don’t pretend you care for these ruins any more than His Highness or myself.”
Dainsleif scoffed, but the jingle of keys could be heard. “His Highness is in the third room from the end of the hall in the western guest wing,” he said. “He hangs at dawn if you fail. You’ll follow next.”
“Scary,” Albedo replied drily, righting himself as if to leave. “You were scarier the first time, though.”
“Wait.”
Albedo did.
“To think that two of our people have been recognized by gods that have scorned us,” Dainsleif said, more to himself than Albedo. “I do wish to speak with you on such matters at a different time, should we meet again.”
“I look forward to it,” Albedo said, dry and unconvincing. “I care little for the goings on of the gods, but I’d be delighted to share my research with you.”
“Oh, and your friend can come out now. You’d best get moving before the patrol gets to this corridor.”
“You talk too much,” Albedo grumbled, stepping away. “You heard the man, let’s get going. It’s not far, but we’ll likely have to fight our way out.”
Diluc only caught Dainsleif’s eyes widen before Albedo was walking away so quickly Diluc had to jog a bit to keep up with him.
Diluc didn’t really like how far ‘not far’ was to Albedo. Admittedly, Albedo spent most of his time in Dragonspine of all places, nearly a week’s trip from Mondstadt, but even so, it shouldn’t change Albedo’s perception of space that much.
“Where are you going?” Albedo asked, dragging Diluc out of his thoughts. “This is the room.”
Albedo leaned on the wall beside the door, twirling the key around a finger. Diluc couldn’t help but be distracted once or twice by the flash of the red palm of his glove. “It has to be you,” Albedo said. “You understand, don’t you?”
Diluc stared at the still-locked door. “Are you sure?”
“His Highness’s personal retainer, for all his dislike of me, would be quite lost in the world without him. Put simply, Dainsleif’s loyalties lie with His Highness. Not necessarily with Khaenri’ah.”
Diluc frowned. “How does that work?”
Albedo shrugged with one shoulder, held out the key. “Plausible deniability.”
As long as Khaenri’ah didn’t know that Kaeya had betrayed her, Dainsleif wouldn’t have to choose.
Albedo had joined the Knights after Diluc had left, so he’d never had a reason to know Albedo, but his blue eyes were piercing, cutting. Diluc wondered for a moment if everyone from this godless country had cold, cruel eyes like that.
Dainsleif’s, for the brief moment Diluc had seen them, had been hollow, deep, devoid of meaning, full of confusion, but they’d held no human warmth.
Albedo’s eyes felt like a scalpel cutting into Diluc’s very soul, cold, so sharp he couldn’t feel where they cut, only that he was bleeding.
Diluc’s heart twisted, just a little, to remember that Kaeya’s eyes had laughed far more than they’d cut. They’d danced much more than they’d hardened. Even if it had been a lie.
Diluc put the key in the lock.
“Back already?” Kaeya’s voice asked from inside, but it wasn’t Kaeya’s voice. Not really. It was tired and melancholy in a way that Diluc had only heard once or twice.
The same voice that had made a confession one night in the rain.
“I was left here to spy on Mondstadt. Khaenri’ah wants war. I don’t know what I want anymore. I know you’re in no place to help me, but I’m asking anyway.”
“You’ve come a long way,” Albedo said softly. “Young Master Ragnvindr.”
Diluc startled at how gentle the title sounded. Affectionate, almost.
It had been Albedo that appeared in the rain, eyes blazing. “They have him.”
“Who?”
“His Highness’ betrayal has finally caught up to him,” Albedo said coldly.
“Who?”
Albedo’s eyes, Diluc realized with a shudder, didn’t burn like fire. More like frostbite, or hypothermia. There was no passion, only a steely glint of the blade he’d use if he needed to. “Your brother,” Albedo spat. “And you’re coming with me to retrieve him.”
“No, I’m not,” Diluc replied. “If the Knights want him back, they can do it themselves.”
Albedo, despite his frame, managed to be more intimidating than anything Diluc had encountered up until now as he stepped forward, murder flashing in his eyes. Perhaps this is what it felt like to be one of Diluc’s unfortunate guilty, to stare up him standing over them with his flaming greatsword in their last moments. “You will come with me. You are going to right your wrongs or die trying.”
Albedo, Diluc noted, does not mince his words.
“What wrongs?” Diluc asked, briefly afraid for the answer.
“He’d lost everything but what little place here that the Knights could give him. Now come, while Klee’s occupied with the Outlander. I don’t need children interfering.”
“Why should I go with you?” Diluc challenged. “He was a spy.”
Albedo’s eyes, bright and blue as they were, felt like a sword through Diluc’s gut.
“The night he went to you was the same night His Highness betrayed Khaenri’ah.”
Diluc’s temper flared. “How do you know about that night?”
Albedo scoffed. “The young master Ragnvindr is a fool. There were two of you involved in that fight, no?”
The title cut more than the words did. “Why would he tell someone like you about that?” Diluc snarled.
“Never mind my relationship with him. This is about your relationship with him. I see you kept the vase. Do you want to keep him alive?”
“I want him to rot for a while,” Diluc hissed.
Albedo’s lip curled in disgust. “He has been. Perhaps you wouldn’t know it, but the only inescapable prison for one of our people is one’s own mind.”
“’Our’?” Diluc echoed. “Are you a traitor too?”
“Khaenri’ah never had any love for me,” Albedo said dismissively. “My craft stems from her, but I was never one of her subjects. My point is that he’s been rotting in a prison he couldn’t hope to escape.”
“Why can’t you help him on your own?” Diluc grumbled, still angry.
Albedo sighed, as if Diluc were some ignorant child. “Because he isn’t looking for my forgiveness.”
For a moment, one hand on the doorknob, Diluc doubted. Himself, Albedo, everything he’d done to get here. For a long moment, Diluc doubted the sky blue eyes that cut deeper than any blade ever would. He pushed that aside. If Kaeya wanted a rematch, Diluc supposed he’d brought it upon himself. Quietly as he could, Diluc opened the door and stepped inside.
“I guess not, then. So soon? I swear Dainsleif just left,” Kaeya sighed. “I was hoping for a sign from the Tsaritsa at least.”
Diluc couldn’t stop his mouth fast enough. “Are they your gods or not?”
Kaeya’s head snapped around at the sound of his voice.
“That’s not what I-”
“What are you doing here?” Kaeya was in his face in a heartbeat. “What are you doing here? Get out. Do you think they’ll let you live?” Kaeya’s eyes weren’t laughing, they weren’t dancing. They weren’t smug and calculating. They were hollow and intelligent, full of a resigned sort of despair.
“Come with us,” Diluc said, because somehow he couldn’t find something more meaningful to say.
Kaeya hesitated.
After a moment, Diluc realized how rare it was for Kaeya to hesitate. He always had some kind of plan, some kind of mischief. He always had something else going on.
“Someone’s coming,” Albedo hissed. “We can have a touching reunion after we’re out of this godforsaken city.”
“It would’ve been easier to get the four of you there together- ah. They’re still here.” Diluc whirled around at the sound of Dainsleif’s voice.
Dainsleif only inclined his head. “Young Master Ragnvindr.”
“I thought I told you to keep her away from here,” Albedo snarled, bloodlust in his voice.
The Outlander gave him a sheepish smile. “She wouldn’t stop insisting. She said you let her go to Dragonspine…” he trailed off, sort of bewildered. “What is this place?”
“Khaenri’ah,” Kaeya said, in an attempt to save Aether from any more of Albedo’s tongue-lashing than he needed to endure. “We really do need to get going.” He hesitated for a second time. “Will you stay behind?” Kaeya asked, seemingly to no one. “I don’t plan on returning again.”
“If that is the case,” Dainsleif said slowly, “Then I too have no place here.”
Diluc’s eyes found Klee, clinging to the Outlander’s leg, eyes wide, staring at Dainsleif and Kaeya. “Kaeya, who is this?” she asked.
Diluc could see Albedo’s shoulders relax a little, even if his scowl didn’t.
“Dainsleif, dear,” Kaeya said warmly, as if he hadn’t been awaiting his own execution five minutes ago. “He’s… a friend of mine.”
Dainsleif and Klee both paused, confused, but Albedo went over Aether and picked up Klee, eyes stormy, but relieved. “You’re a terrible babysitter,” Albedo sighed, to the Outlander, inspecting her for injuries.
Aether, appropriately contrite, looked down at his shoes. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“Never mind that,” Albedo said. “Let’s just get going.”
Of course, it would never be that easy.
Bitterly, Diluc couldn’t help but laugh a bit at how his relationship with Kaeya would never be ‘easy.’
“I can hear the guards coming,” Dainsleif sighed. “I’ll meet you on the surface, yes?”
Kaeya smiled, a brittle, forced thing. “If you would kindly.”
In a foreign gesture of subservience, Dainsleif took Kaeya’s left hand in both of his own and knelt, pressing his Prince’s knuckles to his forehead. “If I fail, please don’t remember me in contempt.”
Kaeya’s sad little smile wavered. “Never. You are the only part of this place I wished for when I was away.”
Dainsleif nodded, as if satisfied with that answer, as he got to his feet. “Please excuse me, your Highness. I won’t be long.”
Kaeya didn’t wait to watch him go, taking off at a brisk clip, as if he still owned the place, a hard, well-practiced mask of determination already in place. Albedo was quick on his heels, despite carrying Klee. “We shouldn’t lose them,” Aether said, sounding nervous, tugging on Diluc’s sleeve. Diluc only hesitated a moment longer before following Aether’s anxious scamper.
As they approached the chamber Albedo had originally argued with Dainsleif in, the walls shuddered with a blast of biting cold.
“Tell Diluc to stop dragging his feet!” Albedo shouted over a shoulder. Diluc scowled a little bit, but picked up the pace. He faltered at the chamber.
Diluc blinked.
They were still underground, weren’t they?
A generous layer of snow covered the polished stone floor, and the walls of the great, round room were freshly decorated with a coating of ice several feet thick. Several humanoid guards were frozen in it.
“Come on,” Albedo barked, “or we’re collapsing the tunnel without you!”
Diluc shook off his shock and caught up.
Kaeya was leading Klee by the hand, pointing to seemingly random places in the floor, near the walls. Aether accompanied them, sword drawn. This hallway, Diluc noted, was peppered with small bombs. Albedo still looked tense, eyes flickering, scanning. “Keep moving!” he snapped. “We need to get out of here, and if anything happens to Klee, I’ll bring you lot back to life so I can kill you again with my own two hands.”
“Just a couple more, Albedo,” Kaeya said. “Then we run.”
Albedo opened his mouth to protest, but thought better of it. “Make it quick.”
Diluc had been present for a few of Klee’s infamous escapades, but none of the ones he had or would experience would rattle him like this one did. The main entrance to the city was housed in a temple to a god Diluc had never heard of, and Klee, Kaeya, and Albedo were running around, placing explosives in no pattern Diluc could discern. Columns that didn’t seem to hold anything up, walls that seemed oddly placed, random patches of floor.
By the time they were done, Diluc could hear the boots on the stairs leading from underground.
Klee lobbed her specialty- a round, especially large, admittedly cute bomb- at the temple. “Run,” Albedo said, taking her hand. “Now!”
And they did. Diluc could feel the heat behind him, smell the burning grass.
Klee’s was a terrifying Vision. Diluc shuddered to think of the day where she’d be allowed to use such power unsupervised.
The blast had sent Albedo and Klee tumbling over each other, laughing good-naturedly, and launched Aether a few feet, but they seemed unhurt. Kaeya had stopped and turned back, staring at the pile of rubble that remained.
Diluc wanted, as he so often had when they were younger, to ask what was on his mind.
“My last service to my country,” Kaeya said softly as Diluc approached. “Fitting, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?” Diluc asked. He had no love for Khaenri’ah. “You could’ve destroyed it entirely.”
Kaeya’s smile was bitter and crooked. “The only thing left of my glorious kingdom were sinners. Her time was long over. You should know about holding onto things past their worth.”
Diluc found himself with questions, but didn’t get a chance to ask.
“Pardon me, your Highness, but might I ask what in heaven, on earth, or in the pits of the abyss was that?” Dainsleif’s voice asked.
Kaeya offered his best charming smile, eyes dancing with mischief. “That would be Sir Kaeya to you, Dainsleif.”